Evolving Systems Course: PGnotes16

Making sense of ourselves in an evolving universe

Paul's notes - Session 16

Course subject: evolution (physical, biological, cultural, individual)

Course method: co-evolution, co-constructive inquiry, evolving by telling/hearing each other's stories, using them to create new ones, individually and collectively = co-constructive dialogue

Course arrangements:

• Thoughts from this week's discussion in forum by Monday evening.
• Paper for Wednesday: do some research on the life on an individual whose evolution interests you.  Write a brief biography of that person focusing on what you find interesting.
• Read for Thursday discussion
  • Alison Gopnik, How Babies Think, Scientific American (July, 2010), 303, 76-81
  • Paul Bloom, The Moral Life of Babies, NYTimes Magazine, May 5
• Individual meetings

Thursdays	Group A	Group B
9 am	Elisa	Genesis
9:30	Aijingwen	Julie
2:30	Ilana	Christine
3:00	Angela
3:30	Hillary
4:00	Eva	Valentina
4:30	Mattie	Kayla
5:00	Carolina	Jordan

Culture as consequence of biological evolution?  Addition to biological evolution?  Differs from biological evolution in what ways?

the whole course?	evolution biological and cultural: similarities and differences?	fashion: a test case of cultural evolution as descent with variation and selection?

Culture and cultural change

• What similar and different cultural practices have developed in our two esem section meetings?
• What new cultural practices might evolve from the intersection of the two?

Moving on to individual change

• Biological change influence cultural change and vice versa
• So too cultural change influences biological change and vice versa?

Cosmicomics: An Epic Search for Truth

• Reactions?  What single character, event, idea most interested you?  most puzzled you?

PG's center of the story (pp 285-288) - interacting individual and cultural change

• Bertrand Russell (1872-1970) - Can we solve human problems rationally?
• Gregory Cantor (1845-1918) - There is no "everything"
• Kurt Gödel (1906-1978) - "There will always be unanswered questions." (Russell: the Incompleteness Theorem meant the end of a Dream ... written in Greek two and a half millenia ago"
• Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889-1951) "What we cannot speak of, we must pass over in silence ... The things that cannot be talked about logically are the only ones that are truly important."
• Nelson Goodman (1906-1998) "The answer to the question 'What is the way the world is? What are the ways the world is?' is not a shush, but a chatter."

Despite ongoing cultural change, ongoing individual change, there is only evolution